From France to Mali, a deportee's struggle far from home
BAMAKO/MONTREUIL (Reuters) - In December, Moussa Sacko spent his birthday in Mali scrolling through messages from friends with whom he celebrated a year earlier on Paris' Champs-Elysees. He hasn't seen any of them since being deported from France in July.
Like Sacko, hundreds of foreign nationals previously protected because they grew up in France now face expulsion under legislation introduced last year.
Sacko was born in Mali but moved to France as a young child to treat a chronic eye condition. He spent most of his life in Montreuil, a Paris suburb.
"I don't feel at home," Sacko said in Bamako, the capital of Mali, which has a rich culture and history but is one of the poorest countries in the world. It is in the grips of a jihadist insurgency. Military coups in 2020 and 2021 led to sanctions, tanking the economy.
He shares a room with a cousin, on an unpaved street near open sewers, and stands out from the way he dresses and speaks French. He says he often feels lonely: "I am on the outside, in a bubble between Europe and Africa."
Reuters interviewed more than 40 people including five individuals affected by the new law, along with rights advocates, lawyers and researchers, for a detailed look at the impact of France's 2024 immigration reform.
In total, Reuters reviewed 12 cases of people deported or facing deportation under the new rules, mostly for crimes for which they served sentences long ago, in what their lawyers called overzealous enforcement that upturned lives.
The lower bar has raised concerns, including in French court decisions, that the rules clash with the European Convention on Human Rights' Article 8 on the right to private and family life.
The French Interior Ministry did not reply to requests for comment. After presenting the bill to parliament, then Interior Minister Gerald Darmanin said it was about "what type of immigration we wish to have," including making it easier to deport undocumented immigrants who commit crimes.
Polls show public support for the law.
France's Constitutional Council rejected elements of the legislation last year, including migration quotas, but the new deportation rules remained, removing previous protections for foreign nationals who settled in France before the age of 13 and those with French children, a French spouse, or a serious medical condition.
The cases reviewed by Reuters involved people deported or threatened with deportation to countries including Mali, Algeria, Morocco and Ivory Coast. Eight settled in France before they were 13. Three have French children, and one has a French spouse.
In two of the cases, judges overturned the deportation orders citing Article 8. In one of those cases, the deportation order was struck down after the man had already been expelled.
The government said all the individuals were a threat to public order, an elastic legal category twelve lawyers told Reuters was previously reserved for hardened criminals but was now invoked more regularly.
"Before, this threat would be terrorism or serious banditry and little by little it has become petty crime," said immigration lawyer Morgane Belotti.
In four of the cases, authorities issued deportation orders without prior warning when the individuals turned up for immigration appointments, without being accused of new infractions, a practice that makes once-routine visits fraught.
"Fewer people are going to risk asking for a residency permit due to fears that it could end in a deportation procedure," said Melanie Louis, of French rights group La Cimade. The group says deporting someone because of crimes they already received punishment for is a "double sentence."
Deportations rose 27% in 2024 to 22,000, government data shows.
La Cimade tracked 341 deportation orders issued last year as a result of the law. The ministry said it did not have data on the law's impact on people who settled in France as children.
The group said it supported 191 individuals last year at the Mesnil-Amelot detention centre, near Charles de Gaulle airport, who would have previously been protected.
Of those, 35 were deported, and 24 released due to courts overturning deportation orders, it said.
FRUSTRATION AT ARTICLE 8
European governments have expressed frustration with courts using Article 8 to block deportations. Britain's Home Secretary Yvette Cooper in March announced a review of immigration courts' use of the article. Gerrie Lodder, migration law professor at the Open University of the Netherlands, described a trend to dilute Article 8 provisions, with people settled as long as 50 years being deported.
The European Union is looking at establishing common rules to expedite deportations, including sending rejected asylum seekers to third countries.
"The aim is to make the process of returns simpler," while respecting fundamental rights, a European Commission spokesperson said.
Across Europe, deportations of non-EU citizens rose by a quarter in 2023, at 91,000, led by France and Germany, according to statistics agency Eurostat.
Advocacy groups and lawyers say France's rules have put individuals at risk in unsafe or unstable countries, separated from family and without adequate healthcare.
Sacko's eye condition, nystagmus, causes rapid pupil movements. He saved enough with crowdfunded donations from French friends to buy a motorbike and a small kiosk to sell basic household goods.
Sacko said riding the bike lifts his spirits. He has no funds yet to stock the kiosk, he said.
"It is very complicated to make a living," he said, his eyes jittery.
Activist Alassane Dicko, deported to Mali in 2006, helps other returnees. He said some were too ashamed to contact their Malian family for help. Homelessness and mental health issues such as depression were not uncommon, he said.
ALONE IN ALGIERS
In November, a court overturned the deportation order against Algerian national Hocine, 34, citing Article 8.
But Hocine, who asked to only use his first name, had been deported to Algeria three months earlier. He is still there.
The order cited past offences. Hocine served around six years during spells in prison prior to 2020 for crimes including drug dealing and handling stolen goods. He says he did "stupid things" as a youth but had changed.
Hocine worked as a cleaner and lived with his partner in the Parisian suburb of Nanterre, where he settled with family when he was 3 years old. He and his partner were trying to have a baby, medical records show.
On August 1, Hocine attended what he thought was a routine appointment to renew residency papers. Instead he was handed a deportation order. Three weeks later police arrested him at his home. On September 4, he was flown to Algiers.
"I'm on the flight bb I can't call my love I love you very much," he texted his partner from the runway.
Reuters established Hocine's story through case documents and interviews with him and court officials. Hocine's partner showed Reuters phone messages.
Despite the November decision, which approved a family residency permit, the French consulate in Algiers refused him a visa.
Hocine is now living with relatives, unable to speak Arabic, and waiting for the court to notify the consulate of a subsequent ruling in his favour.
"If this doesn't work, I'm going to do like everyone else and cross the sea," he said, referring to the dangerous irregular route across the Mediterranean.
The consulate did not reply to comment requests. The Hauts-de-Seine prefecture responsible for his permit acknowledged Hocine's deportation order had been overruled.
NO STABILITY
After a turbulent upbringing, last year Sacko was in a steady relationship and volunteering most days at a community association in Montreuil named En Gare.
He helped with food distribution, events and counselling. He made friends there, who on his birthday took him to the Champs-Elysees.
In 2022, before the new law, a court overturned an attempt to deport Sacko after a twelve-month sentence for selling marijuana, on grounds he settled in France as a child.
The ruling, seen by Reuters, said Sacko was entitled to temporary residency, but the local prefecture rejected two applications, he said. The prefecture did not respond to a comment request.
Then, in May, police arrested Sacko during a raid on a building En Gare used as an operations centre and squat for people in need. Sacko was on overnight duty as a supervisor. In the raid, he lost his glasses, adjusted for his condition.
A deportation order was issued, saying the drug convictions made him a "real, current and serious enough threat," surpassing personal ties to France.
"Right when he was finding his feet, he was put right back in a really tough spot," said Moussa's friend, social worker Assia Belhadi, who co-founded En Gare.
After the arrest, Sacko was sent to Mesnil-Amelot. On July 2, he was escorted onto a flight to Bamako.
He is banned for two years from applying for a French visa. Compared to Montreuil, Bamako feels like a different planet, said Sacko.
The air is hot and sandy. Chickens strut outside. There are no pedestrian crossings and no drizzly mornings, he said.
Sacko said days feel long, with no job to go to. He fears he won't see his ailing grandmother again. His relationship has ended.
His eye condition has been untreated for months, and he has no replacement glasses, giving him migraines and blurred vision. For his birthday he bought himself a cake, to eat with relatives.
On a January evening, Belhadi and other friends rang, asking if Sacko had good news.
"For now I am waiting,' Sacko said. "Then we are waiting with you," Belhadi replied.
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In the ruling, Black wrote: 'The very nature of our free government makes it completely incongruous to have a rule of law under which a group of citizens temporarily in office can deprive another group of citizens of their citizenship.' Although denaturalization was sharply restricted from that point onward, Weil notes that 'a nearly unanimous Court permitted—and still permits, in narrow circumstances—a naturalized citizen to lose her American citizenship.' The limited criteria for denaturalization There were around 22,000 denaturalizations in the U.S. before 1967, according to Weil. By the time his book was published in 2012, he said there had been only 150 since, though the Department of Justice would later tell news outlets that there were 305 cases between 1990 and 2017. 'Although its use has been substantially reduced,' Weil wrote, 'since 1967 denaturalization is still available on two basic grounds. 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The last two conditions are the most broad and open to interpretation. 'Many of the cases for denaturalization based on lack of good moral character involve individuals who have committed crimes prior to naturalization, but were not arrested or charged until sometime after naturalization, and they did not disclose the existence of these crimes during the naturalization application process,' the ILRC writes. Similarly, if within five years after naturalization, someone ' joins or becomes affiliated with an organization that would have precluded naturalization,' such as a terrorist group, they can be presumed to have been 'not attached to the principles of the Constitution' and 'not well disposed to the good order and happiness of the U.S. at the time of naturalization,' and thus denaturalized. Denaturalization under Trump Former President Barack Obama ramped up denaturalization efforts with a Department of Homeland Security program called Operation Janus, mined data, including fingerprint records, to identify people who obtained citizenship through false pretenses. But the first Operation Janus denaturalization didn't occur until January 2018, when Trump was in office. U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services also announced plans around the same time to refer some 1,600 cases to the Justice Department to prosecute, and in its fiscal year 2019 budget, the Department of Homeland Security redirected funds from USCIS to ICE for investigations into naturalized citizens. Trump's first-term administration took denaturalization efforts 'to new levels,' Cassandra Burke Robertson, a law professor at Case Western Reserve University, wrote in 2019. 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'The benefits of civil denaturalization,' said Shumate, 'include the government's ability to revoke the citizenship of individuals who engaged in the commission of war crimes, extrajudicial killings, or other serious human rights abuses; to remove naturalized criminals, gang members, or, indeed, any individuals convicted of crimes who pose an ongoing threat to the United States; and to prevent convicted terrorists from returning to U.S. soil or traveling internationally on a U.S. passport.' Among the cases Shumate ordered prioritizing are cases on those who pose a potential threat to national security, including those with links to terrorism, espionage, or unlawful export from the U.S. of sensitive goods, technology, or information; and those who commit certain kinds of fraud. The National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers criticized how the directive calls for denaturalization via civil proceedings, which the advocacy lamented carry 'a lower burden of proof' and 'do not require the government to provide the accused with an attorney.' It also criticized the memo's 'broad scope and vague language.' 'The Trump Administration's push to revoke citizenship is alarming, and raises serious Fourteenth Amendment concerns,' said NACDL President Christopher Wellborn. 'The use of civil litigation to evade Sixth Amendment obligations demonstrates contempt for the right to counsel. And although the memo purports to target concealment of earlier offenses, the language suggests that any offense, at any time, may be used to justify denaturalization.' When it comes to Musk and Mamdani, however, legal experts have said denaturalization proceedings are unlikely. 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But while former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani, who was recently appointed to a Homeland Security advisory council, expressed support for calls to denaturalize and deport him—'I think that is very responsible request and something the government should do given the nature of the things that he says,' Giuliani said last week, calling Mamdani a 'traitor'—he caveated: 'I don't know that we can come to the conclusion and convict him of it, but he raises a real legitimate concern that he is not a loyal American.' As Weil noted in his history of denaturalization, the Supreme Court has affirmed that being 'a loyal American' is no longer a condition for U.S. citizenship. But as the history of denaturalization has also shown, the Supreme Court can change its mind. And this Supreme Court has already been observed to show 'astounding' deference to Trump. 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